Final Redemption
by SlowCurveFade
Summary: Focuses mainly on Alexis, a bartender in Los Angeles, who is more familiar with the darkness of LA than she'd like to be. Takes place after the end of Angel the series and details of story-lines are a little vague. Sometimes, even eternity isn't enough.
1. Chapter 1

The wind had been blowing harder that night than it had in several years. As Alexis walked along the darker streets of the western side of Los Angeles, she concluded that the wind, now sharply biting her face and hands as she continued on, could no longer be considered a breeze. The tears streaming down her face only stung more, and she despised her body for producing them ever so freely. Her black knee-high leather boots clicked and echoed violently off of the walls that were steeped in darkness along the vacant corridor.

"Tonight was a bad night for a skirt," she mumbled and her teeth chattered for just a moment before she shook her head with vigor and pushed on. She wore a black, billowing mini skirt, the front reliably pressed against her thighs from the northern winds, and the back swayed along with her movement. She focused on the sounds of her own feet, the rhythm of her breath and her ears were pricked for anything that didn't remotely resemble the two.

And then she stopped. A sound, something distant, yet eerily familiar, came and went from her auditory system in just an instant. Now, the echoing of her own two feet had stopped, and even the sounds that her leather jacket made as her arms swayed to and fro had come to a deafening halt. An oversized cross pressed coolly against her breast bone. It was nothing overbearing, but it sent a clear message. She focused her energy to her ears, as if trying to strain them to hear from miles around her in all directions simultaneously.

"This was a terrible, terrible idea," she whispered and began to walk again. Her jacket squeaked, her boots snapped against the concrete and the wind rushed harshly against her ears. And in her head, she began to repeat lyrics to songs, songs that she knew backwards and forwards.

'Wastin' away again in Margaritaville,' she thought loudly. And she heard the steps again, clicking and clacking, not of her own. Her skin pricked, and a sharp chill went down her spine. So she began to whisper.

"Searching for my lost shaker of salt, some people claim that there's a woman to blame," she sang, now reaching a strained whisper. The steps were louder, and they were off beat. It was like a double-timed dance, only poorly maneuvered and lacking finesse.

"But I know," Alexis said coming to a halt, "It's my own damn fault."

Just like that, two sets of hands grabbed either shoulder of Alexis's medium frame and yanked her backwards. Her feet flew into the air and a loud, raspy grunt resonated from the cracked lips of her attacker. She was thrown in the air against a wall, her back falling flat against it's brick exterior and she roughly crumpled to the ground. Sharp pain shot to all corners of her body, but her only goal was to get her eyes to see straight ahead. Coming towards her was what looked like a young man, only his fingernails were long and yellow and she could smell his breath from where she sat. As he neared her, she saw that he was not quiet as young as his built implied, and his forehead was wrinkled. His eyes shown with bright yellow and he had two unmistakably abnormally sharp teeth.

"Every," Alexis breathed, "…Time." She pushed all the energy that her pain was fostering into her feet and with one sharp yelp, she kicked the dark figure right in the stomach and as he went stumbling backwards, Alexis scrambled to her feet and took off down the alleyway.

She could hear his grunting and snarling chasing after her, and while she tried to look around for weapons, her legs seemed to be stuck on autopilot. Right, Left, Right, Left, they carried on without her conscious mind telling them the otherwise. This was for the best, since her whole head was consumed with the concept of what to do next. She needed something wooden, and she needed it to be sharp.

Her head had been turned to the right, and she had looked ahead of her just in time to narrowly avoid the long-coated figure running towards her. Yet he didn't seem to be interested in her, and as she stopped and turned to see what would conspire, the new figure ran full force into a tackle of her attacker.

"Run," he grunted as he and the other exchanged blows. Alexis shook her head and searched around the alley for anything she could break. 'Men in LA are just a little too cocky,' she thought as she spotted a broken broom handle. Grasping it with her left hand, she hurtled towards the dark figures, now entangled up against a wall.

Recognizing the long coat as her disconcerting, unfortunate Prince Charming, Alexis yelled out, "Hey there," and her attacker turned sharply. With a smile, Alexis plunged the wooden broom handle into what she could only guess is where a heart would go, and like that, all that remained was more dust on the already dirty concrete walkway.

"You…" the remaining man stammered, more intrigued than confused, "you staked him?"

"Yeah," Alexis huffed as she tossed the broom handle aside and began to walk away from the man, "teaches you to be the hero in this city, doesn't it?"

"You shouldn't be dressed like that," he stammered on, slightly taken aback by her thanklessness, "you just look like bait."

Alexis gave the man a dark, cold stare. She looked into his deep brown eyes, and while she did take notice that he was fairly attractive, in a tortured artist kind of way, she was too angry to care.

"And you," she hissed, with a sense of contempt in her voice, "shouldn't dress like _that_. You look just like a vampire."

She spun on her three-inch heels and her brown hair, blonde roots shining softly through the color, swept behind her as she turned away from him and started out down the alley. She waited to hear footsteps behind her, to hear his voice call out for her to wait, the questions of why he turned to dust, but there was nothing. She stole a glance as she rounded the corner on the brighter streets of South Broadway, only to see him, standing rigidly six feet tall, and the only thing that moved was his duster, which danced along with the wind. And with that, she was gone, and he was left in darkness.

Alexis' dabble in crime and punishment caused her to miss the last bus on route to her apartment, so she was forced to hail a cab. It wasn't a long distance, but after her extended stay in the 59th Ave. alley, Alexis found herself slightly fatigued and no longer interested in the concept of her own mobility. So she got in the first cab that would give her a pause, and recited an address that may or may not have been understood. She was never sure about those type of things. When they would just stare at her for a while after she had finished speaking. He looked away eventually, and began to move, but it was the silence in between actions that caused her uncertainty.

The cab rolled to a stop in front of an old building. The streetlights were out in front; as if to tell a passerby that it was unsafe to enter. She emptied her wallet to pay for the ride, and quickly got out without another word. Her mind was elsewhere this early morning and surprisingly, she was not too keen on a broken conversation.

She strolled up to the front door of the building, pulled open one of the large, wooden double doors and entered the dim atrium of the building. A sigh of relief escaped her slightly chapped lips as she heard the thud of the wooden door shutting and consequently locking. It was nearing 2:45 in the morning, yet Alexis felt more awake now than before. In a moment's weakness, the first time her body felt relaxation pass through the bloodstream, stray tears trickled down her face as she opened her mailbox. A deep inhalation attempted to control the overwhelming sensation that coursed through her entire body, and for the moment, she felt stable. She hastily grabbed the contents of her mail slot and used the back of her left hand to wipe away the saline from her cheeks. A little eyeliner, or maybe mascara residue streaked across her hand.

Lexi hurried up two flights of stairs, and tried to walk softly down the corridor leading to her apartment. It had been this way, every night, for years now. She was uneasy with why this night felt different. Ignoring the fact that the events that had transpired were not uncommon, yet not a regular occurrence, there was something else in the air around her that was not as it had been on nights before. Her apartment building was sick with silence, and she despised every floorboard that did not crack, her door that no longer creaked when she opened it, and embraced the sounds that all the locks and deadbolts made as she turned them gingerly.

The inside of her apartment was warm. The walls were exposed brick, with metal pipes and insulation framing the ceiling. She dropped her keys on the island in the kitchen, and her bag took residence on the floor beside the sofa in the living room. From the outside, this place looked treacherous, but inside her apartment, you couldn't match the two. The appliances were black, and shining, like they had been polished every day in their short existence. There wasn't much food in the refrigerator, but then again, Alexis wasn't much of an eater. She had survived on so little for so long, that if she had kept much more food in the place, it would just spoil.

It would seem to an outsider that Alexis suffered from intense vanity. From the moment upon entry, there were approximately five mirrors in plain view. A large one hung in the hallway, three decorative, square mirrors hung in succession on the wall next to the door to her bathroom which was directly across from the front door, and another in the kitchen area. Alexis approached the mirror in the kitchen and took a look at the cut on her forehead. She was having trouble remembering how and when it came to be, but none of that really mattered anymore. Scrapes and scratches, bruises and fractures were just a part of everyday life at this point. She got a towel from inside one of the drawers in the kitchen and ran it under some warm water from the sink. She sauntered back to the mirror and began to dab around the cut, slowly and gently washing off the dried blood from around it, and revealing its severity.

They were never as bad as they looked, the cuts and scratches that she adorned. She went through the routine of cleaning the wound, and bandaging it, something that seemed to be more of a weekly routine. And as she went through the motions, her mind slowly drifted back to events that preceded her exciting journey home from work. And as she remembered what had caused her tears in the first place, she began to move towards her bedroom.

Her steps were direct and with destination, as she traipsed over to her bulletin board above her desk, she began to rip down photos and notes, a couple movie ticket stubs and finally, with much emotional effort, she took down a small piece of paper with the word, "always" written across it in a male's handwriting. All these things were quickly moved to the trash, and Alexis stumbled, slightly catatonically, over to her bed.

The sheets were soft. The bed was unmade, but in a way that made it easily to curl up under the comforter, which Alexis did almost instinctually. She pulled the white blanket over her head, and brought her knees up to her chest, trying to contort her body to its smallest form possible. And in the dim light, softened and blurred by the blanket, she let go. The tears couldn't come fast enough, the sobs made her stomach feel like it's was going to come out of her throat, like she was trying to throw up all the hurt she felt inside. All her internal organs felt like they were on fire, like her heart wasn't broken, it was engulfed in flame, and everything around it was quickly succumbing to the heat, burning up like tissue paper kindler. Another one gone, another one was finished with all she had to offer. And he threw her away; just like she threw away all traces that he had once mattered to her. She was his trash, and he was just another vision to haunt her dreams.

Alexis fell asleep like that, in that exact position, her eyes burned red, and run dry. She was so consumed in her own pain that she failed to notice the dark figure on her balcony, sitting in her chair, staring in as if this was some sort of television show. He was completely enthralled in the moment, like nothing could tear his eyes away from the life form inside. And he sat there as she fell asleep, knowing nothing of why she cried and screamed, unaware of who or what had caused someone to feel so completely devastated, and yet he couldn't tell what he felt for her. It could be sympathy, or empathy, yet at the same time, it was pity that stirred within his chest. In her breakdown, he saw his own loneliness. And so he sat there for a bit, and just watched her sleep. This night, neither of them would be alone.

The alarm went off promptly, as it always did, at 10:30 the next morning. Alexis, in her traditional form, pushed it off the bedside table so the batteries popped out and the noise stopped as timely as it started. She rolled over, slowly opening her eyes and then immediately shut them, due to the excruciating pain caused by sunlight now shining directly in her eyes. Eyes remaining shut, she stumbled over to the window, and not noticing the chair that had been turned facing inwards instead of outwards like usual, she threw the crimson red drapes shut and turned away.

Alexis was in all the same clothes she had been wearing the night before, minus her shoes that she had taken off by the front door. Her hair, which had previously been neatly swept back into a ponytail, was now undone mostly and everywhere. Her makeup was smudged and smeared, and she detected a strong scent of smoke and liquor, from her job as a bartender. Her eyelids were puffy and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot, which only proved to make her eyes look even bluer than they already were.

"I look like a crack-whore," she mumbled to herself as she stood in front of the bedroom mirror, assessing the damage. She ran her hand through her hair, and pulled out the elastic.

She shook her head and moved straight towards the bathroom. She peeled off her clothes and stepped into the shower, quietly. While Alexis hated the silence, she wasn't much of a noisemaker. She preferred to allow external sources to disrupt the peace; she opted to maintain the balance.

Alexis ran her hands through her hair as she lathered it with shampoo, taking every moment and trying to hold on to the seconds as they passed by, ticking and tocking away, slipping through her fingers just like the strands of hair. A deep breath later, she pushed all thoughts from the previous evening out of her mind and finished showering. If she were going to make it to work on time, she would have to leave her house in a couple of hours. Not that she had any real desire to get to work on time, which she rarely did. It was just part of her nature to worry, to plan.

Reaching for a towel, Alexis quickly got out of the shower and wrapped it around herself. She could see the sunlight seeping into her apartment from the living room, and she could feel it's warming. She had learned to find simple joy in things like this. Natural sunlight, it's warm, comforting sensation, like hope is still out there, somewhere.

Alexis walked over to her dresser, her hair still soaking wet, water slowly dripping down, and pulled on a pair of jeans, ripped in both knees. She took her time putting on her crimson Victoria Secret bra, still sore and bruised from her evening escapades. She ran her fingers over her right side, feeling the bones of her rib cage and the pain from her internal bleeding.

A small grimace appeared momentarily across her face as her long red nails passed over a particularly dark part of her side. With a soft shudder, she reached for a black tank top and pulled it on slowly. Alexis was taking a lot of deep breaths, in order to maintain control over the ever-present sinking feeling that had taken up permanent residence in her stomach. She walked across the room to her closet door, and opened it.

The lights flicked on and she began to thumb through her shirts, finally landing on a navy blue cub scout button down that she had gotten from the Goodwill store for 35 cents. This particular scout had gotten several badges in various camping-type accomplishments. Alexis often toyed with the idea that she herself had somehow earned them vicariously. It was an amusing notion, as Alexis had never been good with the outdoorsy type stuff, but then again, Alexis hadn't exactly had the opportunity to try.

It took her about an hour to finish her hair and makeup, which, for some reason, she found a comfort in doing. The normalcy of it all, blow-drying, applying foundation, mascara, it was trivial and mundane, yes, but Alexis had learned long ago that trivial mundane type activities were only to be treasured. For her remaining hour and a half, she puttered around her apartment, straightening up a little, putting away clean dishes that had been left out overnight to dry, and repacking her bag with fresh stakes. Anytime she left without them, it was as if a vampire alert went off to tell them new meat was wandering the streets. At about a quarter 'til two, Alexis had put on a pair of converse, grabbed her black leather motorcycle jacket, and was locking her front door.

It was bright outside, with a soft breeze, and if she had lived anywhere but Southern California, the leaves on the trees would probably be turning pretty colors and gracefully falling off their branches. Instead, however, she lived in Los Angeles, where the leaves would be green until they turned brown and just shriveled up and died.

Even with the traditional big city haze that hung over the streets, Alexis felt the sun warming her as she walked along. It wasn't heat; it wasn't beating down on her, as if to scold her for wearing too many dark colors. It was warmth, as if it came from the inside of her, gently rising to the surface of her skin, giving her a comforting feeling, like hot chocolate on a cold day, like an embrace meant only to translate a love, pure and honest. It brought a smile to her lips for only a second, as she got lost in the feeling. It was the site of the nightclub that she worked at that brought her spiraling back to reality. She didn't look up to notice that the sun was mostly covered in clouds. And she didn't look around to see a familiar figure standing in the nearby darkness of an alley.

But he saw her smile, he saw her moment of sincerity, and for the first time in so many years, he felt warmth, too.


	2. Chapter 2

There were so many different aspects of her job that she hated, that on any given day, Alexis couldn't even name the one that was worst. The patrons of the bar were either arrogant and wealthy, or cheap and mildly retarded. But as any good bartender learned, Alexis was a professional at faking interest and ignoring passes. She went about her business; the bar was fairly empty until about 7, when men and women, looking to get lucky or get trashed, started rolling in by the dozens.

Alexis had taken to wearing a belt buckle that doubled as a bottle opener, for she found that men really jacked up the tips when she used it to open their beers. Sometimes, when she really thought about it, it made her feel cheap. But that feeling was always overshadowed, mostly by forceful loathing, and it was soon buried under the piles of internal issues that Alexis had yet to deal with.

"Uh, bartender?" A young man, in his late twenties, scoffed loudly.

"What can I get you?" Alexis replied, without returning his coy smile. She grabbed her tips off the bar before they got lifted, which was common, and turned her attention to the blonde, straight-laced looking guy, with an aura of entitlement that he wore like his pretentious, overpriced suit.

"Well, for now, I'll just take a couple shots of wild turkey, but just so you know, if you're lucky, maybe I'll take you home with me tonight," he spoke, liquor already coating his breath, and his suited friends laughed and high-fived a few steps behind him.

Alexis usually took advantage of a display of unwarranted cockiness, but for some reason, tonight wasn't her night. She poured the shots in silence, not giving him the moment's satisfaction like she was at all entertaining the repulsive thought of a conversation, and she slid the shots over towards him.

"Ten bucks," she stated, un-amused and extremely annoyed with his half grin.

"Tell you what, I'm gonna put down a 50, and we'll call it a tip for now. But it's really a deposit for later,"

Alexis looked down at the Ulysses S. Grant staring up at her. In her heart, she was offended, and revolted. But it had been a long time since her heart and head had connected on something. She picked up the fifty-dollar bill, and gave the man her best fake smile.

"Yeah, about that," Alexis replied smoothly, "we're just gonna call it a tip."

She walked away to help another customer, a young woman who appeared as if she had already had one too many cosmos, by the looks of her smudged makeup and unfocused eyes. The girl giggled as a fairly handsome man ran his fingers softly over her neck.

Alexis watched cautiously as she habitually mixed the cosmopolitan. From the minute she arrived in Los Angeles, years ago, she knew that she didn't like the city. There was something unwelcoming, and unnatural about the night here. Not that it was any better than where she grew up. Alexis casually turned around and glanced in the mirror along the back wall of the bar. There was the girl, off-balance and starting to slur her speech, and there was the guy, sleazy, but present in the picture. Alexis exhaled, partially relieved, but mostly annoyed.

Sometimes, she wished that all men were vampires. At least it would explain how they could be so awful.

Most nights took a while to come to an end. She began work around 3:30, and rarely finished until around 2 in the morning. Long hours, terrible pay, and the people were enough to make you wish yourself into oblivion. But it was something she knew; Alexis was familiar with every corner, every tiny bit of the dive bar that employed her. Somewhere, deep within her soul, that was enough to stay.

"Lexi," her manager, Dustin, started in as he closed the front doors behind the last customers, leaving at a tilt, "How'd you do tonight?"

"Better than last night, I guess," Alexis mumbled, thumbing through her tips, shoved haphazardly in her pockets. "I made about 300."

Dustin gave her a weak smile. He was one of the only people Alexis had regular contact with, mostly because it was a requirement of her job.

Dustin had been the first, and since only, person to give Alexis a second glance. He was a middle-aged man, the hair on top of his head was grayed and starting to thin. When he smiled, which he did often, all the wrinkles in his face scrunched up, giving him a traveled, worn down look.

Alexis knew he wasn't human, at least, not completely. His eyes were older than she could imagine, and there was an air about him that was unexplainable. But he had given Alexis a job when she needed one, and he always had a kind word for her. She didn't know what he was, where he came from, or why he was here. But that didn't much matter to her anymore. She couldn't even answer most of those questions for herself, so who was she to hold someone else accountable for their own answers.

She finished cleaning the floor of the bar, and went into the backroom to put away the mop. As she wiped the glisten of sweat from the very top of her forehead, Alexis glanced across the room into Dustin's office, where he sat quietly and diligently, looking over the bar totals for the night. She grabbed her jacket, and slid it on slowly.

"Lex," she heard Dustin call to her. She crossed the floor of the backroom towards his office and stood in the doorway, leaning up against the frame and attempted her best smile.

"I'm done with the floors, all that's left is the trash," she started in.

"I'll get that, no worries," he continued as he thumbed through the currency that lay out in front of him, in incredibly straight piles. Not a corner was bent, nor stuck out from the structured existence that he had placed them in. "Is your boy coming to pick you up?"

"No boy, just me," Alexis said with a weak smile and a shrug of nonchalance.

"There was no heart in that answer," Dustin responded, looking up from his work. "But I have known you long enough to know that you don't put your heart in most conversation. Although, not to be intrusive, but if you aren't putting it in your words, leads me to wonder where it is?"

"In a lockbox, very far from this existence," Alexis replied, flatly. "I'm fine, Dustin. You know that. You know I'm fine. Everyday I wake up, and I'm fine. That's just who I am."

Dustin looked into Alexis' eyes with a soft, empathetic stare. He said nothing else for a few moments, and it was clear to Alexis that no more would be said of the matter. She liked that about Dustin. Somehow, he always knew when the conversations were over. Sometimes she thought maybe he could read her mind. And in her moments of pure loneliness, she wished with all of herself that there would be someone that could.

"You should hail a cab. This city is cruel at night," he stated, getting back to tallying his expenses.

"I know," Alexis stated, and without a moment's hesitation, she continued, "I will."

The air was humid that night. Within the first few minutes of her walk, Alexis determined that Dustin must not be a mind reader, or else he would have known that she had no intentions of hailing a cab. Or maybe he was, and simply knew it would be fruitless to argue. It would have made complete sense to do so, seeing as how trouble always seemed to find her, no matter what, but Alexis feared much greater things than monsters and vampires. The intangible objects that kept her up at night dwarfed such physical beings.

About ten minutes or so into her walk, Alexis heard footsteps coming from behind her. Rather than postponing the confrontation, which was normally her first option, she decided to stop and turn around, to see what company she was keeping. And it was to her surprise, and annoyance, that the individual strolling behind her was a familiar face. It was the over-tipper that was now gleefully approaching her.

"I told you I'd see you again," he commented as he caught up.

"I don't know what planet you came from, but in this country, this is called stalking," Alexis retorted and turned to continue to walk.

He reached out and grabbed her arm. She spun back around to face a challenging smile, and eyes that were like wild fire, completely lacking inhibition. He was taller than her, most definitely, maybe about six feet. His dirty blonde hair was now unkempt, partially due to the breeze but mostly from a night of drinking. He was a medium sized frame, but still resonated a strength that Alexis feared she might not be able to compete with. Still, her emotional resilience was fighting, full force.

"You should let go of me, right now," she spoke steadily. He simply smiled and released her arm, airing a full confidence that she would not be able to truly get away.

"Do you think that I just picked you out of no where? Do you think that you are someone random, Alexis Reynolds? Believe me, nothing in this life is random."

Her last name struck a familiar chord of uneasiness somewhere within her chest cavity. There should have been no reason for him to know even her first name, for she had never told him, and he had not asked. And yet, somewhere inside her head, she knew that he knew so much more than just a name. As she stared up at him, she recognized that he knew where she lived, who she was, and what would keep her right where he wanted her.

Alexis wrapped her jacket tightly around herself and crossed her arms. Still, she said nothing. 'What was there to say?'

"We will have something special," he began, starting to pace around her, "for a while at least."

He laughed, a familiar laugh; a laugh that came from one who looked to her as someone below himself. Inside, she felt like breaking. As if the blows would never stop coming. It just kept getting harder and harder, and then when she thought that it would let up just a little, it got just a little worse. But this was no time for misery. There was a fighter somewhere beneath her skin, someone had once told her that.

"You're pathetic, you know that?" Alexis responded, finally. She could feel her blood rushing through her veins, getting hotter and faster with every second that passed by. "You think you have some kind of power over me? You think I care that you know who I am? If you do, then clearly you know nothing of me. Tell me something. Was your big plan to come here and make me feel powerless? Were you going to bring me down with your words and your trivia until I was just a scared, trembling shell of myself? I am _not_ afraid of you. I have lived through evil more powerful, more infinite than your dismal, little mind can even fathom. So you want to play head games? So sorry, I don't."

And as the last syllable of the last word left her mouth, the hastening fury inside of her came to a screaming finale as her fist connected poetically with his nose. And as he reached up with his right hand to hold his face, her other arm swung around to catch his left eye.

He staggered back, seemingly in shock, trying to regain his composure. There was so much tension; so much anger in her mind. Alexis could only see her own pain, built up over so long; nothing else was clear. But she waited. She waited for him to walk away. She waited for him to finally understand; to be the first in her life to understand what she meant when she said 'no.'

"So you like to play rough?" He tried his best to be light-hearted. There was blood running down his face; Alexis was sure she had broken his nose. "I'll be seeing you, Ms. Reynolds, you can count on that."

For a moment, she thought about chasing him down, hurting him in a way that might enable him from ever being able to walk again. Alexis toyed with the idea of finally being free from the abuse that seemed magnetized to her. And yet, her feet did not leave their position on that dimly lit sidewalk.

She looked down at her hands, expecting them to be the source of the hurt she felt inside. However, her hands were numb, as was most of her body. There was not a fresh spot on her physical being that she could find hurt. It was a reopened wound on her soul; these people that came and went from her life all seemed to know exactly where to stab. And yet, at the same time, she felt better, less tense. Punching someone in the face really had a relaxing effect on her. And with that thought, and exhalation was released, and she turned around.

It wasn't until she was in the comfort of her apartment, which she had arrived at without anymore interruptions, that Alexis found a piece of paper, a business card specifically, in the pocket of her jacket. She placed her keys down on the kitchen table, and fumbled around for the back of the chair. Feeling it, she slumped down in it and flipped the white card over to read the words "Angel Investigations" with just a phone number listed. There was a picture, a little logo, that she assumed was supposed to be an angel, although to her, it looked more like a lobster.

Alexis wasn't quite sure what to do with the card. She had no recollection of where it came from, how it ended up in the pocket of her jacket. She placed it down on the table and just looked at it for a few minutes. Investigations? Seemed like a strange business card to just have lying around. She whispered the phone number out loud to herself once or twice, seeing if maybe the sound of it triggered something inside of her, but there was nothing.

She left it, face up, on the table. She made her way to her bedroom and changed into a pair of red cotton shorts and took off her Cub Scout shirt, leaving her in just the shorts and a black tank top. She washed her face and went into the living room. The wall adjacent to her bedroom was completely hidden with shelves, which held hundreds, maybe even a thousand of vinyl records she had collected since as far back as she could remember.

Alexis gingerly selected an old Leonard Cohen album and placed it on her turntable. She smiled as she ran her fingers over the top of the record, letting her fingers sink into the grooves, feeling the music just waiting to be reproduced off of it. After she dropped the needle at the beginning of the album, and the smooth melody of the record leaked and poured out of her speakers, she found her way to the kitchen.

Out of the refrigerator, Alexis selected a red apple and brought it over to the sink to rinse it off. She leaned up against the counter and she took a bite out of it, peacefully distracted by the deep, gentle voice resounding out of her speaker cabinets, enjoying the plunking sound that the bass made every time a new note was played.

Regardless of the drama that her day had brought, it was always fixed with an old album and just a few moments for her to get lost. Music took her away, swept her off her feet, welcomed her with open arms, and made the world seem less tragic, or more tragic, depending on the record. But the music that made her feel that maybe the world was even more tragic than she previously thought still made her feel better. Because it was the music telling her that even though the world was hell, it wasn't a hell that she had to experience alone.

Alexis pulled herself up to sit on the counter in the kitchen, and she sat there for the next hour or so, just listening and slowly eating her apple in peace. She smiled along with the music, when you could hear in his voice that he was smiling, and she reflected on the words that he spoke, as if he was speaking directly to her.

And as the record ended, Alexis tossed the core of her apple in the trash and walked over to the turntable. She pulled the needle off to the side and put the album away in the exact same spot where she had originally pulled it. Checking the locks once more on her front door, she walked back into her bedroom and slid into bed.

Her red drapes were still shut from that morning, and she left them that way. She turned over on her side and curled her legs slightly. Her knuckles felt a little strange from when they had connected with that man's face, but it's shadow of pain served only to remind her of what was at stake. This life was not what she thought it should be, but it belonged to her. And it would not be ripped away.


End file.
